My "I'M SCREWED" list for trading

Since there ain't diddly fricking squat on the tube today, and it's fricking snowing, and I was thinking about some thing this morning while I was reading and righting (eeerrrr, wrighting, whiting, wad ever), and I mumbled one of my most favorite terms under my breath to myself, "I'M SCREWED", I thought I'd do a list of them for my future referrence, in no particular order, although I usually mumble the first ones more than the last ones:

I'm Screwed, IF:

I DON'T HAVE A COMPLETE PLAN FOR THE TRADE: This includes the rather minor thing (which I consider LEAST important) like the entry, and ESPECIALLY the most important thing, what I'm going to do when it goes against me, BECAUSE IT ALWAYS DOES! Plus all the following items.

I CHANGE MY TIME FRAME DURING THE TRADE: An example is entering a trade based on a nice setup you see on a WEEKLY time frame, and then panic and exit based on what happens on a five minute chart, even though your original stop may be many points away, this one comes from...........

NOT HAVING ALL MY MOO COWS GOING THROUGH THE SQUEEZE CHUTE IN THE SAME DIRECTION: Jumping a weekly trade on a five minute chart comes from not having my time frames lined up properly in the first place, I see this great setup on the weekly chart and just have to take it, not even bothering to look at the daily, 60, 15 and 5 minute charts, for if I have all of them looking just as good as the weekly time frame, I won't HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT JUMPING IT!

NOT SETTING MY POSITION SIZING BASED ON THE TIME FRAME: I can go ALL IN on a trade based on a five minute chart, as I only intend on being in the trade for like maybe ten minutes, but I certainly DON'T want to tie all my capital up on one trade that I may be in for months on end, which leads into..........

NOT HAVING SET POSITION SIZE PARAMETERS: This may be one of the single most important parameters, and most often over looked, and it's to bad, because it's probably the EASIEST SET OF PARAMETERS I CAN MAKE FOR MY TRADE SETUPS! My position sizing is ALWAYS determined by my stop, thus if I determine that the MOST I ever want to lose on any one trade setup is like, 1/2% of my total capital, and I have $100,000 in my account, that means the most I am willing to lose is $500 on any one trade. Thus, on that weekly trade above, if it's a $50 stock I am trading, and I determine that a "logical" stop would be under the last pivot, which is $5 lower than the current price, then I could only take 100 shares of that stock in the trade. I mean, I could take a .50 cent stop, and take 1,000 shares, but on a $50 stock the odd's go up pretty fast that I'm going to get stopped out on just a minimal shake out move with a tight stop like that. Of course, I can do a "drop dead" stop, where I've studied the stock and watched it, and all the parameters are lining up on the weekly, daily, 60min., 15min., down to a five minute time frame, and I feel this is IT, this things going to go up, and a 50 cent stop is more than enough room to prove me right. There's a lot of ways to determine my position sizing, the more important thing is to HAVE a set of parameters, and stick to them.

I DON'T HAVE A FUNNYMENTAL REASON FOR ENTERING A TECHNICAL SETUP, OR VICE VERSA: I don't believe in Funnymentals of course, I think they ALL LIE, but, I check the supposed fundamentals all the time, and of course a fundamental reason doesn't have to be the P/E or wad ever else bull shit, it could be a MACRO reason, wad ever, it doesn't matter, what matter's is that having BOTH of them in alingment will help my CONFIDENCE, the confidence to stay with the trade, the confidence to easily push the intimidating mouse button, and the confidence of TWO stops, either the set in stone technical stop, or the fundamental stop if they don't make sense any more.

NOT HAVING SEPERATE ACCOUNTS FOR SEPERATE TIME FRAMES, OR MIND GAMES: I hate TradeStation in this respect, I can't seperate my visual accounts in it, or at least I haven't taken enough time to figure out how to. My account manager always shows ALL my positions, and personally, I DON'T WANT TO KEEP WATCHING SOME TRADE I MADE ON A WEEKLY TIME FRAME ALL THE TIME! I take the trade, set the stop, and forget about it, other than checking it on a chart once a week. So TS is my gambling account, mostly for day trading and option swing trades, which I'm always monitoring since it's my charting platform as well, and my InterActive Broker's account is for swing and position trades, and some gambling, as I can create seperate little folders and tags for them and not have to see them all the time, and of course Fidelity and Vanguard are for my retirement and fixed income accounts, which I hardly ever look at, I might check them monthly. It's mostly just a mental thing, but not watching those long term trade's all the time will keep me from jumping stop's or exits on them, just because there may be red or green blinking fricking lights staring at me all the time.

CHASING THE COW: We got two bull's that we keep around all the time for breeding stock, and they end up on the Beaver butcher block every two years, or we sell them, cause they start, aaaaaahhhhh, DATING, their daughters, anyway, they are a kick to watch, all they ever do, IS CHASE THE HOTTEST COW AROUND! Both of them, hahahaha, that's when they get into fights of course, or start knocking down the younger bulls who are trying to be just like Daddy. Anyway, this should probably be filed under KNOW THYSELF, and I'm not comfortable chasing stocks, and when I'm not comfortable, I usually make PISS POOR DECISIONS! The way I look at it, if I missed it, I MISSED IT, there's a million other things I could be doing, other than trying to be the bull with the biggest balls, and jump into that 10% gapper. Don't get me wrong, I know of bunch's of people that make big bucks chasing those things, I just happen to know, that IT'S NOT RIGHT FOR ME! I know that my best trade's come when I get into some thing that just screams at me to GO, usually some thing with that tight stop that I love to have, usually off of pulls back's in strong stocks or rallies in weak stocks, there's no better feeling than to all ready be in the hot stock that the other bulls are now chasing, and being in the unenviable position of having to decide how much to take out of the trade, boy, is that a bitch, hahahaha! This sequence should also be filed under the 80/20 rule, of which I'm a big believer in, that being that you make 80% of your gains in 20% of your trades, I've seen myself do this year after year. The trick of course is to not lose every thing during that lousy 80% of the time when you aren't doing to hot, geeeze, what a fricking grind, it usually ends with me saying some thing like I'm quitting, or going on vacation, or getting drunk, wad ever, any thing to get away from what ever it is I'm NOT doing. Kind of related to CHASING THE COW is I watched this, aaaaaaahhhhh, "analyst", on Pimm Fox's show friday, and I swear, SWEAR, he took 15 minutes telling us all about the great things about this one particular stock, on and on and on, and all I could say to myself, was, geeze, this guy sure sounds like he's trying to "SELL" me some thing! The point being that if I am buying some thing based on what some Wall Street, "SALEMAN", is spouting off about, then I TRULY AM SCREWED! Wall Street's whole reason for continuing to exist, is their ability to SELL their stocks to retail investors like me, and I mean that literally, they LITERALLY sell you the stock that they own, and they do it as close to the top as they can! And then they sit back, and buy it back from me, like when I was so happy to sell it back to them last March 9th.

Ok, since no one wants to volunteer I'll add another one on 2/8/10:
MASTER OF NONE: What's missing of course is the first part of that phrase, JACK OF ALL TRADES, and this is actually a BIG one, I can think of three parts to it right away.
Number one, and this relates to the Position Sizing idea, is TAKING TO MANY POSITIONS! I can hardly think of an easier way to lose money, than having so many positions open you concentrate on some positons at the expense of other positions. My personal way of getting around this is to seperate my "trading" and "position" ideas, I'm always concentrating on the trading ones, while my "position" trades are set in stone, with prearranged position sizes and stops.
Another is ignoring the KISS principle, keep it simple stupid, I only have so much concentration and staying power during the day, and I use it up very rapidly flipping all over the place trying to control to many positions.
A third bad thing this produces is neglecting important little items when taking positions, like when is earnings coming up on a particular stock, are there upgrades and down grades coming out of the crooked analyst's, is the entire sector starting to lag the market, did the CEO just run off to Mexico with the secretary and the companies money, did the CFO just quit, the idea being that taking a position in some thing involves a lot of TIME investment, not just capital, and my time is very important to me, as I don't have much of it I can waste.

I'm done, there's other things, in fact feel free to tell us all one of your own personal favorites, I'll add it to the list here, and keep it up on the blog, so we can come back and refresh our beliefs once in a while when things aren't going to hot. I'm mostly interested in the unreal "mental" things we do that screw us, not the technical things like when to enter a stock, or exit, I mean that's stuff that's just mechanically wrong and can be easily corrected, it's those continuing mental mistakes we make that really screw us.

Weekly Swing Trade Ideas for Russell 1000 and ETF's

Lot's of differing views in the WackOsphere this weekend about the key reversal day in the markets friday, some of the more interesting ones are one that Sysin pointed out at Trading the Odds, http://www.tradingtheodds.com/ , Quantifiable Edges, http://quantifiableedges.blogspot.com/ , VIX and More, http://vixandmore.blogspot.com/ , Cobra http://cobrasmarketview.blogspot.com/ , Woodshedder Technical Analysis with WOODSHEDDER , plus my normals like The Elliott Wave Lives On and the sentiment post at http://www.tradersnarrative.com/ , blah blah blah blah, etc etc etc, I'm ready for the week now, I'M TOTALLY CONFUSED, HAHAHAHA!
Speaking of Captain Kirk's volatility stops (I was, wasn't I?????), I have the TradeStation coding for those if any one is interested.

This is the complete list of the weekly short's on the Russell 1000 I forgot to add in, as noted down at the bottom.

Hhmmmmmm, I just can't, for the life of me, figure out what the MSW is trying to tell me, about what it thinks about the longer term prospects for the market!!! Hahahaha, I've seen it make some pretty emphatic statements before, but I have to admit, I don't really remember it being so slanted in one direction, I'd say this is a contrary "sentiment" indicator, but I don't really think the damn software cares about human sentiment in the least.

Just out of curiosity I totaled up ALL the signals, the new signals, confirmed signals, and continuing signals, and it's on 12, TWELVE, buy signals, and 244 short signals! This is far and away the most bearish I've ever seen the software get, I mean, well, I really don't know what to say. Being a damn contrary "investor" type, I'm tempted to go against the stupid thing, I mean, it can't be this fricking bad, CAN IT????

I put four of the weekly charts up there, but it don't matter, you can just about pick'em if you are so inclined. The one I'm watching over the longer term, will be JNK, I have HYG in the lower left corner, but they are both pretty much the same, I won't really get interested in JNK for quite a while, like, if we try to challenge the March lows, at that point I think JNK was yielding about 16%+, and the REALLY good part about these two items, is that they just follow the market around most of the time, IE, they are market performers, so not only will you get the big dividend yield, but you will catch most of the market move as well. Also, it tracks the Q's really well, and as such, you can use the Q's to HEDGE your position if you are so inclined, IE buying cheaper puts on the Q's, rather than having to pay up for them on JNK, as the 40 cents a month dividend is built into the JNK puts.

In contrast to the weekly scan of the ETF's, the daily scan is fairly split, and doesn't have nearly the total number of signals on it, 13 total buy signals and 38 short signals.

I made a mistake on the picture I took, there's actually 6 more new buy signals that aren't showing up on the picture, UGL, GMM, GML, FDV, ECH and QAI. Almost all the new signals are on a lot of those weird, low volume type of ETF's that I'm not really interested in, the EWJ short at the bottom is one of the more liquid ETF's, but to be honest I'm not really interested in that as a short, it look's like the same reversal bar we had in most of the other markets. I put the Q's on there mainly because, well, they're the Q's, but mostly I find it interesting that the MSW didn't change it's signal, or stop out, it still think's there's more down side for them.

On the daily scan of the Russell 1000 the MSW seem's to agree with the turn around day we had friday, doing some thing I don't see it do very often, and actually spitting out some signals on some of the big cap names, and even more rare, BUY signals at that! It has new buys on BAC, CSCO, HIG, PRU, and FCX, I have the charts of FCX and BAC on there because FCX is a favorite among the Mojo crowd, and of course one of my VERY few core positions is in BAC (don't ask me why, I have NO STINKING IDEA WHY!). More interesting to me is the new buy signals in two of my favorite smaller cap stocks, the best smaller bank stock in the market, HCBK, and an energy stock I made money on early last year, SD (for some dumb ass reason I always go back to stocks I made money on, and avoid stocks I lost money on, pretty weird stuff). Now, SD "could" be a little dicey, the good stuff is it made a very nice key reversal day friday with the market, it took out the low it made in December under $8, and closed at $8.37. If I took it here, I'd have my stop under that friday low, in "anticipation" of a possible Big "W" formation some where down the road. Now, the BAD stuff is the weekly chart, that same $8 number is also the low it made during the July pull back with the market, and what it now has is a very obvious head and shoulders formation going back to July, very obvious, so it just reinforces the idea of the stop under $8. BUT (that's my last "BUT", I promise), it's March low is only around $5, and looking at an extended picture of the weekly, it's in a basing pattern going back to 2008, after it got completely thrased with the rest of the energy stocks during the collaspe of 08', falling from $69 down to that $5 area.
Those two short signals I have on the chart were about the best I could see, MRVL and NAV, and I don't like either one of those.

In keeping with it's bearish view of the weekly chart's of the ETF's at the top, the MSW is equally as bearish on the weekly charts of the Russell 1000, coming up with 6 new buys and 44 new short's. I forgot to add the complete list of the signals here, thus I have them at the top as noted.
On the buy side CAG and COO actually look like very nice SHORTS to me, HAH, take that MSW! Anyway, I have BGP as a special situation on the charts because not only is it an "option" stock at $1.16, but that famous Hedge fund shorter Ackerman is all over this thing as one of his favorite long plays, he says there's not way in hell it's going broke (unless it does of course, hahahaha), and is a prime take over target, wad ever, it might be worth some pocket change. Every one has probably used some thing with a Briggs and Stratton engine in it at some point in our lives, and BGG may have found some support at a longer term uptrend line, after putting in a nice tight harami type candle last week.

I have HUM and PG on the short charts, but almost all of those on that list look the same (with a few exceptions), so you can just pick your favorite from that bunch. AAPL is NOT one of those exceptions, it looks like a decent short to me, although you would be fighting the world in that one, but QCOM may be one of the exceptions, it look's a little over done to me, I'd wait for the eventually rally before taking a shot at it.

Weekly Sector Money Flows, and Q Senario's

Talking about money flows this past week is just worthless, we all know what happened, it's just a matter of "degree", as to who had the WORST flows, and the winners in that category were healthcare and financials, AG's, GLD, emerging markets, etc etc, wad ever.

The sector's that got the best inflow's are just as predictable, but much more interesting, what's interesting to me is the "herding" behavior of "investors", as the consumer staples had the best inflows, IYC, BUT, they actually performed WORSE than even the major index's, I'm pretty sure this behavior comes from Fund managers who, I guess, all think EXACTLY alike, in that when their funds are limited to being able to only BUY stocks, and when the market start's looking like it may be in pull back mode, or worse, they all automactically pile into "SAFE" investments, IE the staples, which should "outperform" on the way down, that is, they will LOSE less than the other sectors. Well, at least they were right about one thing, they LOST money!

The dollar, UUP, and oil, DBC, are still showing pretty consistent noncorrelations in their price action, but I find it pretty interesting that both of them had about the same degree of inflows this past week. DBC, at the top, had a big volume surge on monday and tuesday while it appeared the dollar may have peaked, but the constant news flow out of the EU about the deteriorating conditions in the "PIGS" triggered a continuation of the flight to "saftey" (excuse me a second here, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, whew, got that out) to the green back, "supposedly" sending the oil nut's back into their stinking holes. BUT, the chart's may be sending a different message, as UUP may have reached an area of prior support, which then became resistance back in August, and with that inverted hammer, and huge volume yesterday, "could" be a blow off top, right at that same area of resistance. Now, far be it for me to say that oil may be one of the single most manipulated market's in the world, that would be a truly wild assumption on my part, but that chart sure looks like a classic suck'em in and crush'em type of setup, as a week ago it filled the gap from October almost on the button, blasted higher monday and tuesday, setup a red bodied inside day on wednesday, then gave the "impression" of holding the gap thursday, before the massacre yesterday. Who, or WHOM, got massacred, I have no idea, but some body did, and I can probably guarantee it wasn't the "producer's", or "commercials", and with the big volume they may have washed them out, setting up a blast off next week when new's of a bail out of the PIGS comes out over the weekend. This is just pure speculation of course, but even just a hint of some kind of backing by the EU may be enough to crush the dollar strength.

The one that probably surprised me the most, was that Bond's, in the form of TLT in the chart just above the list, actually finished DOWN on the week, yep, all this massive flight to saftey resulted in the supposedly safest of them all finishing negative on the week, hhhmmmm. That chart is pretty broken, BUT, it's also at a very critical point, bond's set up a massive head and shoulder's formation from August through December, breaking down through the neck line in mid December, and now it's rallied back up to back test not only the neck line, but also the trend line from the head down through the top of the right shoulder. With the big increasing volume the last three days, there's only two things that are going on, either the player's are loading up in anticipation of TLT breaking higher through this area, OR, they are using the little rally to get the hell out of Dodge while they can. The cool part is we will know pretty soon, I won't chase the initial break higher through the neck line, if that's where it's going, as it's a 99% probability that it will come back to test that neck line, before proceding higher, IE, I feel like I'll have plenty of time to get into it if it does go higher.

Speaking of broken chart's, I have the Q's on the main list, but the udder main index's are just as broken, as I mentioned the ghost of Old JP Morgan really took it to me yesterday, it wouldn't be so bad accept I had already pushed the order button on my Hawaii vacation (I leave on July 20th), hahahaha, sigh, fricking ROACH! Anyway, I think I'm going to get another chance, we're about to get a "little Brother" death cross, that's the 20dma crossing down through the 50dma in the green circle, and with the recent dump, we now have all kinds of resistance and congestion waiting for us at higher levels. I'm praying we do rally from here, I still have half the June position, which isn't going to do me any good if we rally, but I'll be able to either add back into it, or I'm thinking of possibly starting a new one that goes out to September, I haven't made my mind up yet. Anyway, first resistance is obviously the $44 "area", if we get an accompanying volatility dump with the rally I may start adding back in at that point, and see how it goes, it's probably going to take a few days to get back up there (geeze, that's a pretty stupid statement, we could do that in ONE day, like, maybe monday), which would also give that 20dma time to continue down, so it may also be providing resistance at that point, should we get there. TSV is setting up a very nice down trend line, and is close to crossing over it, which would also get it back into positive territory, supporting the idea of a coming rally, ALTHOUGH, MS is still just awful looking, but that can change pretty fast if the pumper MOMO players come back in.

There's a couple of senario's that would get me more positive on the Q's, one would be we go up and test $44, then fall back down to like the low of monday, then start back up, that would set up a little inverted head and shoulder's, with a break over $44 really powering us higher. Another would be we power through $44 next week, like to around that prior high just under $45, then come back and test $44, hold, and then start up again, I would consider that really cool, IE, I'd like that one. Another senario is that we just blast off, like the dumb ass blast off's in November and December, SIGH, now that one, I ain't gonna like, but I could live with it. The bottom line in any of these senario's is we have to break back over $44, that is the starting point for any positive looking action.

Of course, we could just continue lower next week, hahahahahaha, I have to admit, I'm not expecting that, but that would make me REALLY HAPPY!

2/5/10 EOD

4:15pm: AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH! WHO TURNED THE LIGHTS OUT ON ME??? ROACHES!!! Sheeeeett, I was having a decent week until that dumb ass pump happened going into the last hour of the day. Sysin said it was good Ole Jpm, as Zero Hedge notes, http://www.zerohedge.com/article/thank-you-jpmorgan-must-see-jpms-etf-desk-ramps-market-higher-close , the information I got was that there was a rumor going around the floor that Greece was going to be bailed out over the weekend by the EU, wad ever, it turned a good week into a decent week. Luckily, I had unloaded half the June position at lower levels before the pump, but I still have half left, I only make money in the short term if we get a volatility jump, which we had going on as you can see on the VXN chart in the middle, the VXN dumped with the pump.
We finished with a key reversal day on the Q's chart at the top, and both the DIA and SPY had Dragonfly Doji candles, under extremely heavy volume, all very nice candles if you want the market to go UP, HAH! Wad ever, I may start a new position if we get another Volatility dump next week, we shall see what we see, it just pisses me off that we stopped out in the middle of now where like we did, we had those lower numbers I talked about, LOCKED UP!

Have a good weekend.

6:34am: WOOOOOOOO WEEEEEEEE, absolutely HORRIBLE numbers in my personal opinion, forget the numbers for this month, we had -20,000 VS the "expectations" of a gain of 30,000, but the slimey bastards made some "revisions" to the previous numbers, just some minor little "adjustments", like they revised the December numbers from -85,000 to -150,000, November from 4000 to 64,000, and revised October from -124,000 to, get this, -224,000, and as far as I can tell, the seasonal adjustment came in at, be still my beating heart, -1,200,000 VS the -850,000 "expected", geeze, even the "experts" I'm listening to are a little confused about the report, the unemployment number went DOWN to 9.7%, but of course, the main thing with that is you have to get the number on how many people LEFT the total employment rolls, IE, they gave up trying to find work and are not counted in the over all numbers.
Wad ever, the really important stuff is what Da Boyz did, hahaha, they immediately took the DOW futures down -75, sucked in as many seller's and shorter's as they could, and then took us higher, DOW currently down -7, and I have no doubt we will be positive by the open, hahahaha, the Q's are already UP 25 cents, SIGH, I'm going back to bed, see you next week.

4:30am: Futures are down this morning, DOW about 35 points, BUT, when I first got in the DOW was down about 65 points, as Japan dropped about 3% over night, so we are getting a little pump into the payroll report that comes up in two hours, as Da Boyz get ready to try and game the most recent slimey lies that come out of the Government, the payroll lies of course being the Birth/Death "adjustment" they use every month to make the numbers fit their agenda. Once a year they come clean and do the seasonal adjustment, IE, they include the previous omissions and show what the "real" numbers were closer to, and the concensus is that they will "find" an additional 850,000 jobs that were lost during the last year, that some how got over looked previously, wad ever.

ANYWAY, I'm only bring up the chart's of the Q's above because of what happened yesterday, and also with what's going on in the premarket, for we stopped yesterday at about the most critical level I can imagine, that being the low from a week ago, last friday. Remember, it don't mean diddly squat what the pay roll number is, it's the REACTION to the number that counts, and if the premarket is any indication, then they may gap us down at the open, which, if you look at the daily chart at the top, just opens the door wide open for us to go down to the pivot lows in November and October, as we have no support under us until those points. The GOOD part, should the Market Gods decide to take us down there, is that area is HUGE support, for not only do we have the two pivots, we also get close to a test of the 200dma which is sitting around 40.25 (of course, the REALLY good part if we go down there, is that I will dollar down big time, and probably get my YEAR taken care of, hahahahah, wooooo hoooo). I haven't been this confident in some thing in quite awhile, there is just NO REASON we should not get down to that 40.50-41 "area", NONE, ZERO, which of course scares the shit out of me, as it usually means there ain't a chance in hell it will happen, hahahahahaha!! SIGH, wad ever, should "they" decide to make a stand here, which "they" could as they may have enough shorts sucked in to provide some ammo for a short covering rally, I'll probably exit the June position and stand aside for awhile, and maybe start a new one at higher levels or some thing.

Now, the weekly chart at the bottom is a whole nother animal, this is the first "character" change in the market since that little blip last June-July, and even though we've broken all the trend lines and that kind of stuff, the trend is still UP, as the nearest pivot is those July lows. We won't get into a down trend on this chart until either, number ONE, we make a new pivot low on that chart, then rally, and then come down and break below that new pivot low, OR, we go down and break that July pivot low, and then rally back up to that low and fail to get over it, and start back down, that would be a major trend change, although I think that senario is highly improbable, I think the first senario is the much more likely one. Regardless, that July low is very juicy looking, as not only is it the first pivot low on the chart, but it's also in the "area" of a 50% retracement of the rally off the March lows, which would be about $36, so that's a pretty cool looking area.

Of course, knowing how things work, "they" probably try and rally us here, which will depress me to no end, sigh, wad ever, it wouldn't be the first time I got depressed.

Good luck to you out in La La Land today.

PS: Just a little smart ass comment about the Market Mavens (it's my very FIRST smart ass comment by the way), when we were climbing the wall of worry and going ever higher on basically worse and worse news, hardly a day went by when I didn't hear one of them say, "well, you know, the market is a "DISCOUNTING" mechanism, and looks ahead six to nine months, and what's going on is that the market is seeing great things down the road". Well, NOW, those very same Maven's are saying things like "this pull back is a gift from God", "load the boat up", "You HAVE to be in to catch this next 20 year bull market", "The Market is resting", blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, etc etc etc, my point being, that I haven't heard ONE of them say, "Well, you know, the market is a "DISCOUNTING" mechanism, and looks ahead six to nine months, and what's going on is that the market is seeing HORRIBLE things down the road". I guess the Market only looks ahead when it fit's "their" agenda, sigh.

2/4/10 EOD

My 60min McClellan is getting a little, aaaaahhhh, over sold, at -190, BUT, I've seen it get a LOT worse than that, IE, MORE over sold. Going into the close we tried to fill that gap at $42.60 I talk about below but came up short, by 2 cents, low for the day $42.62.

2:00pm: I put a simple "equal move" senario on the daily chart of the Q's, the first drop would be from the area of the rally highs down to the low of five days ago, then you put that same drop from the high we made yesterday, and you get an "equal move" down to about the $40 "area". This also corresponds to an "area" we could get down to, if we break below that last standing support we have, the bottom gold horizontal line, which is the gap fill from 11/5 at $42.60, we "almost" (as in horse shoes) filled it five days ago, coming up 3 cents short, but should we get below that line, we start running into the area in the yellow circle to the left, from early November, in which that dumb ass blast off we had left a horrendous VOID, or clear air area, which won't provide much support at all should "they" decide to take us down.

You know, think about this, if we could get like a nice little 50% drop from here, say like the DOW going to 5,000, the S&P to 500, and Da Q's to $5, number one, they would all be nice fibonacci numbers, but more important, EVERY ONE WOULD BE A WINNER, the Bear's would absolutely dollar down big time, and those pollyana Bull's might finally be able to buy their precious stinking stocks at a half ass reasonable valuation!!!!! And besides that, and even more important, we'd all get to have another DOW 10,000 Party, AGAIN, Woooooo Hoooooo!!

This is a chart of that A/D (Advance/Decline) Differential chart I talked about earlier, I circled some of the previous times we had as large a drop as we had today, I mean, it marked the bottom's previously, BUT, doesn't mean it's going to work again.

10:05am: They "may", have found support at that white line, which, believe it or not, is the low of the gap from 11/9, AGAIN, and it's also the low "area" from 3 days ago, wad ever, the $TICK and $VOLD are just horrible, BUT, in looking back at when they have been this low in the past year, 11/27, 10/28, 8/17, 5/13, 4/20, 3/30, and 3/2 & 3/5, this amount of negativity has been a "temporary" bottom. Personally, I hope it's NOT, hahahaha, I could dollar down if we go down another 20% from here over the next day or two, wooooooo hoooooooo!

7:00am: Gee minnie crimminie fricking christmas sake!! I just spent three hours reading a whole bunch of intelligent bearish articles, in preparation to completely rebuke the nauseating feel goody pollyana BS that John Chambers always regurgitates during his confernece calls, and I get back to the real world and find out the futures are dumping, DOW down about 85 points, hahahahaha!!!! The typical explanation from the yakking yelling screaming talking heads is because of weakness in over sea's markets, and the fact that the weekly payrolls and continuing claims and productivity and unit labor cost's and monthly retail sales for January all came in lower than "expected" (that was a mouth full, wheeew), but of course, we all know it's because of the most over loved over valued and over brought peice of shit markets in history, wad ever.

Anyway, I'm not going to waste all that good reading:

mirror much of what the brilliant Jeremy Grantham said in his recent market outlook
Glenn Neely: Multi-month decline
FABER: S&P COULD DECLINE 20% FROM HERE

On a completely off beat note, about some weird thing called trading, this is actually a fairly decent list for once, of the 9 Characteristics of Great Traders, http://bit.ly/buVLOC . Of course, just like I don't read Dr. Brett any more because he constantly makes me feel bad about myself, I only read crap like this to do the same thing. I've probably put in at LEAST, 3 times those 10,000 hours, and some times I don't think I know any more than I did when I started about 12 years ago, YUCKO! I do however, have number 3 and number 8 in the bag, although I "think" that I do number 3 to such an extent, that it actually hurts me a lot, wad ever.

PS: By the by, with the gap down, I fully "expect" (IE, I'm probably wrong as usual), that we will probably end up fairly flat, as "investors" await the monthly pay roll report tomorrow. On a side not to THAT, the Government will be giving it's revision to the year, and it's expected to show OVER 800,000 MORE job's were lost last year than originally reported, IE, THE GOVERNMENT IS A BUNCH OF LYING BASTARDS!!!! But, the revision will be dutifully ignored on Da Street, as we all go on our merry way in La La Land.
Good luck out there today.

Mid-Week Swing Trade Idea's

HAH, even the MSW won't let me forget about HOLX, hahahaha, it's the only new buy it has on the daily scan of the Russell 1000. It got totally wiped out on a short that it had on prior to the gap, but, being the trooper it is, it's trying to say, HEY, if you can't beat'em, join'em! Wad ever, it seem's to see some thing it likes on this inside day, and thinks it could go higher, I certainly hope it works for some one, but it goes with out me, that type of pattern is not my cup of tea.
The rest of the daily signals were shorts, which I like better, FTO is working on a side ways consolidation after a gap, I've heard some, aaahhhh, not so flattering things about this stock, wad ever, your R/R is very clear, over the highs of yesterday and I'd be gone. X didn't get much of a bounce, it stopped at a horizontal support line from a while back, and took out today's lows, I could see it going back to DB in the $44 "area", stop over yesterday's high. ARO is, well, aaahhhh, it is wad it is, one of those flakey "in Voge" fashion thingey's, it's struggling trying to get over the recent highs, and "could" see the bottom of the consolidation area, around $33, with a very clear stop over yesterday's high.

The MSW can be a funny animal, it doesn't come up with any trades in the Q's for like a year, this is on the daily charts, and all of a sudden it's had four of them in the last two month's, two winners and one break even, to be honest, I REALLY don't know what it see's on the Q's right now to want to short them again, but, HEY, the last one worked all right, wad ever, we are getting a CSCO pop after hours, and the Q's are breaking over the $44 resistance area, which is what they do, yep, that's what they do, get to a resistance area, and then gap us over it in the low volume after and pre market times, whether we hold it tomorrow, well, hmmmmm. It came up with no new buys, the other shorts all look the same, it says to short Europe and a few American large cap ETF's.

2/3/10 EOD

2:00pm: That list above pretty much tell's the story, you could call it a split market, but hell, the only ones up going into the last hour were the Q's, THEY LOOOOOOVE THOSE TOY MAKER'S! Talk about your BITCH and YE SHALL RECEIVE, hahaha, every one of those big Dog's I bitched about last night were up accept for BRCM and ORCL.

The five minute is interesting, for we sold the Q's in the after hours, sold them in the premarket, sold them, sold them, and then the market opened up, and SOME BODY brought the shit out of them for the first 30 minutes straight, hahahahaha, talk about your roachey trap's, hhhmmm, I wonder who that SOME BODY was, like Butch and Sundance said, who are those guys?? Other than the dumb ass squeeze, the Q's actually had a choppy, but nice uptrend all day, making higher lows and higher highs, the only decent short chance I saw was when we double topped it about 40 minutes into the day, off the highs we made just before the drop into the close yesterday, then we had another cool little DT going into the close, but still managed to hold the up trend line.

The 60min McClellan at the top is working on a big divergence against this cute bear flag we have working, we've probably satisfied a touch of the first resistance around the $44 "area", if we get through that area the next resistance comes in from the double top on 1/26 and 1/27, about $44.84, BUT, if, or WHEN,, we get over that we get clear air back up to the old rally highs. Should be interesting to see if they sell the great earnings CSCO is probably going to put up after the close, that would fit with the previous big Dogs.

6:45am: You know, it just bug's the heck out of me, I mean, I don't know if my eye's are getting that bad, or if I'm just plain gulible, but I can't tell you the number of comment's I've heard, or the number of articles I've read (wred, red??), talking about the low volume on the bounce the last couple of days. I mean, I've used every means I can, magnifying glasses and stuff like that, but it still looks to me like the volume the last two days is higher than any other "positive" days since early November, wad ever.
I circled what is close to being a perfect "Avalanche" setup that happened a week ago on the Q's, we had the thrust down through the 50dma, followed by that little tight inside day doji, but then the next day screwed the pattern up, we needed a nice little tight harami type candle that failed to reach the 50dma, followed by a day like we had on the third candle, that reached the 50dma, then pulled off of it before the close, the short came on the big gap down day, when we took out the low of the previous day. Anyway, udder dan dat middle candle, da pattern was pretty classic, the key was the inability to get over that 50dma on the two attempts it made, it's just some thing to think about in the future, as we don't get those very often.
Futures are down a little this morning, DOW about 24 points, as "inwestor's" SOLD the good news out of the ADP report, which came in better than expected, with the continued selling of good news, it's pretty obvious that people are more concerned about all this decent economic numbers forcing the FED to raise rates before they probably should, wad ever, we get the services ISM at 10ET, watch out for that one, it could be a market mover.
Good luck out there in La La Land today.

NasDog Money Flows

AAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! Hahahaha, SIGH, HOLX showed up on the bullish engulfing list yesterday, it's the chart in the top list, I didn't consider it worthy enough to mention, as I make it a habit not to mention EXTREMELY speculative little things, wad ever, it "could", have more to go, who fricking knows.

ANYWAY, I ran the NasDogs through the money flow lists, the "leaders" are at the top with the loser's on the bottom list. There's some straaaaannnge stuff going on in the Dogs, if you remember (I'm sure you do) the biotech's were sucking wind last week as far as money flows, this week they are the darlings of the NasDog's, hahahaha, geeze, what a bunch of fickle flakey "inwestors"!!

But that's not the strangest thing, if you look at that list, what's missing??? Come on, what is it?? Ok, since you probably WON'T look at the list anyway, what's missing is THE BIG DOG'S! RIMM is the first one to show up, and it's way down toward the bottom of the top list, when you look at the big money flow loser's at the bottom, here they come, MSFT, GOOG, QCOM, ORCL, BRCM, ADBE, EBAY, YHOO, AAPL was only saved from being the WORST on the list by QCOM and JBHT, speaking of JB, they are getting CRUSHED in the after hours, after missing earnings, but hey, a world wide transportation outfit that's saying business SUCKS shouldn't bother any of the Green Shoot's crowd, IT'S COMPANY SPECIFIC, hahahaha!

Call me skeptical, but I HARDLY think the NasDog's are going to blow higher, with out some of those Big Dog's participating.
By the way, I have ADBE as the chart on that loser's bunch, I mentioned it this weekend, well, it held the 200ma yesterday, and had a nice day today, and "could", have more to go.

I ran a quick money flow scan of the sectors, just to see what's up, and mainly to check out the Q's (they SUCK, although TSV and money flow have both tried to hook up a little), the Q's are winning the race to the bottom, as they over took their brethern the XLK as the worst money flow leading loser's.

The DBC got some HUGE inflow's today, along with DBA, and the chart looks really cool, it looks just like ADBE did, it stopped on the bottom of the Linear regression channel, held the 200dma, and blasted off yesterday and today. This is REALLY GREAT, wooooooo hoooooo, that's probably one of the reason's JBHT is getting crushed, they, and the economy, do just fricking great when oil prices are rising! I mean, I pay attention to oil, you have to, but I DO NOT invest in some thing, whose SOLE purpose in life, is to completely destroy their customer base! Wad ever, go for it, I hope the stinky shit goes back to $150 a barrel, my cache of gun's will probably be worth a lot more on the open market.

More January Effect

2:00pm: HAH! This is so simple, it's obviously NOT going to work, but the Q's have rallied back up toward their "first" resistance area, that being the previous pivot left from two days ago, PLUS, it's at the whole number $44, PLUS, it's in the area of the declining 60min 50ma, PLUS, my McClellan has been over bought for two days, and is trying to diverge against the latest price rise, ALTHOUGH, as WE ALL KNOW, it can stay over bought waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy longer, than I can stay solvent trying to be short.

I have to head out on my walk before the wheather turns on me, but I didn't get any sleep last night, so, SCREW IT, if I ain't gonna sleep being OUT of the market, I might as well be IN the market, so I set up a new June position, long June 39 calls and 48 puts, I paid a total premium of $1.67, so I got some work to do protecting it.

6:45AM: HAH! To be filed under the catagories of: you learn some thing every day, I didn't know that, I never heard of that, and talk about your bogus crap, I see where "some body" was talking about another January effect fairy tale, where the sectors that out perform in January, tend to out perform for the rest of the year, HAH! The only thing I have EVER "subscribed" to, is you ALWAYS buy the previous worst performing sectors, and sell the best performing sectors, ALWAYS, IT NEVER FAILS (well, ok, maybe it does some times, hahaha).
Last year, XLU, XLV and XLE out performed the other sectors in January, XLU ended up being the WORST performer for the year, with XLV in the bottom half and XLE about in the middle, the leading sectors ended up being XLK, XLB and XLY.
Based on my Sector porfolio that I update every week on the money flow posts, the worst performing sectors in January, in order, are EWZ, IYZ, XLK, XME and XLB, the best performing sectors were, in order, UUP, GLD, TLT, XLF and XLV.

Speaking of EWZ (I was, wasn't I??), I have been trying to work on a post of the coming Olympic effect, with a comparison of the China Olympic effect we witnessed, which I started talking about over a year before China hosted the games, and which ended in tears just as I predicted, the pre-Olympic build out is JUST as predictable, as is the eventual collaspe that follows the games. Actually, in China's case, the collaspe started almost one year BEFORE the games started, and the bottom came almost EXACTLY the day the games ended, hahahaha, I'm tellin ya, weird stuff. Anyway, Brazil is almost at the exact moment in time when the bubble run up started in China, when their index turned in a nine bagger over the next five years (Brazil host's the games in 2016), so with the drop in EWZ recently, it "could" be close to the buy point, although I'm liking the $60 as a better entry point. Wad ever, it's just some thing I'm thinking about.

It's 15 minutes before the open, and the futures are blowing up, DOW up two points, Wooooooooo Hooooooooooo!

Watch List for 2/2/10

This is a bearish scan, bearish engulfing, but the stock I have high lighted, DFS, looks to be nearing an area of support, TSV and MS are decidedly negative, but it's coming into it's upsloping 200ma, and an area of prior support from a low last September. Some on that list that DO look a little bearish include NWSA, RSH, THG.

In keeping with showing a stock that is the opposite of what the scan was intended for, on the bullish reversal bars I'm looking at one of my most favorite hated stocks, PCLN. No doubt, the pattern is NOT bearish, the stock found support at the gap from November, it put on a nice bullish reversal bar today, and could go higher, BUT, it's made a "roof with out walls" topping formation, it's not REALLY in an uptrend, it's basically in a high level consolidation, and if it lose's that gap support it could see $175 faster than I can type, well, $175.

Some that DO look bullish include ABC, ITT, PKI, AEO, DLM, FAF, T (stop ALWAYS under $25), AN, CAH, KFT (if the new owners from Cadbury don't sell their shares), AES, and ADBE, anyway, there's a lot of them today, 207 to be exact, usually indicative of a "change", for what it's worth a lot of the utilities showed up on the list.

This is just an unusal scan, it's for an abandoned baby, or morning star, or Island reversal, what ever you want to call it, two showed up, which is about the norm, it doesn't happen very often, DGX looks interesting because it left the baby right on the door step of the 200ma, which set's up the R/R on the trade, under that 200 and I wouldn't be hanging around long.

EOD 2/1/10

We opened with a decent little gap this morning and headed north immediately, taking us right up to the pivot point into the release of the ISM number, which ended up coming in ahead of expectations. A little quick note, most of the yakking yelling screaming heads were claiming the market rallied on the ISM news, hahahahaha, as you can see, on the Q's at least, we hit our highs before the ISM came out, and actually dropped back to test the open after that, wad ever, I guess every one has to have a "reason" for some thing. Anyway, we tailed the shit out of it around the pivot, in the circle, before dropping back down to the open, we rallied back up to the pivot, dropped back and tried to test the open again, making a little higher low, rallied back up to test the pivot again, then basically wallowed around into the close, IE, CHOPPY SHIT!

Anyway, in the spirit of a wild hair up my ass, I decided this weekend to exit my June position, which I did during the first half hour, it took me that long. I was actually a little lucky with the gap up, for I was fighting the VXN, as it was dropping, which was causing me to lose money on the money maker side, the puts, as the Delta was dropping, but I had sold puts to offset some of the Delta loss in the main position, so I concentrated on exiting the calls first, then the short puts and the long puts, it worked out ok, so I'm a happy guy.

My plan right now, is to rest, hahaha (I actually had my best night's sleep last night in quite awhile), and maybe start a new position if we get a volatility drop back down to that circle on the daily chart, around the 21.80 "area" in the circle. I'm not sure at this point if I'll still be in the June series or not, I may go out to September, which is the next series, but the premium is pretty steep right now, I'm looking at the 38 calls and 48 puts, June has a total premium of 1.57 for the two positions, which is not to bad, but five months makes me a little uncomfortable, as I need another 10% move to dollar down.

Anyway, it'll give me some thing to do while I'm out of the market, ta ta.